


Fastidious

by narsus



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Fratricide, Incest, M/M, Necrophilia, Post-Series, The Reichenbach Fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft prefers it when matters resolve in an ordered, sensible, fashion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fastidious

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Sherlock belongs to the BBC, Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat, and obviously in the genesis of it all, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Your brother is dead.”  
Mycroft smiles thinly. “No more so than you, Pallas Athena.”

The click of the call ending abruptly cheers him immeasurably. Irene can be just as temperamental as Sherlock, though he much prefers her temper to Sherlock’s at the best of times. Besides, technically speaking, as he always is, this is not even a betrayal. For his admission to qualify as such Sherlock would have had to have invested some trust in him in the first place. As such, without any bonds of loyalty to be broken, Mycroft has done nothing more than speculate. Irene will draw her own conclusions.

Of course, it would all be easier if Mycroft could share his knowledge with John or Gregory at the current time. Gregory suspects of course, because Gregory always suspects Mycroft of something. Quite what Gregory supposes Mycroft is hiding, on the other hand, is debatable. Matters being as they are, it’s entirely likely that Gregory suspects Mycroft of having some hand in his brother’s demise, quite possibly to the point of having been the mastermind behind the elaborate and overblown plan to do away with Sherlock once and for all.

Not that Mycroft hasn’t considered it. Tidying away all of those untidy edges, the little details, that Sherlock is forever missing, does hold a certain sort of appeal. It isn’t as if Mycroft’s never fantasised about locking his hands around Sherlock’s slender neck and squeezing the life out of him. Strangulation would allow him to observe so much more than a simple smothering or a quick, clinical, snapping of the neck. Mycroft is, after all, eminently concerned with the details.

As things stand, Sherlock will die eventually and Mycroft is certain that he knows exactly how. He will slip into a drug-induced coma and from thence into the arms of eternity. Mycroft will make certain that it’s no more complicated that simply falling asleep. There will be no distress or panic as Sherlock succumbs. He won’t even realise what is happening to him, so precisely will the drug have been calibrated to addle his brain. The way it will be staged the only thing that will give the whole matter away is Mycroft himself. Sherlock must, of course, be allowed to realise, at the very last moment, before the darkness takes him, that it has been Mycroft’s doing all along.

Similarly, equally, Mycroft knows how he himself will perish. It will be a single gunshot, straight into the brain, a work of calculated angles and velocity. They will find him at his brother’s side, his blood and brain tissue probably splattered, dramatically, across the bed, across Sherlock’s prone form. They will find both brothers respectably clothed, of course, so perhaps it might even go unnoticed that Mycroft’s second to last act on Earth was to violate his brother’s corpse.

Sometimes Mycroft can’t help but wonder if Sherlock knows all this already. Not the details but rather the general theme. It’s entirely possible that Sherlock does and has staged this entire, overdone, affair in an attempt to escape inevitably. It’s a fanciful thought and not at all in fitting with Sherlock’s usual mode of operation. He rarely plans for the long-haul and that, as always, will be his undoing.

The ringing of Mycroft’s mobile, for the second time that day, isn’t as much of a surprise as it probably ought to be.

“I’ll tell him to run.”  
“Well done, Pallas. Well done. Do please pass on my regards if you see him.”

This time he hangs up on her. She will do both. Her respect for each brother necessitating each action. Mycroft wonders if Sherlock will laugh if he ever receives the message. It seems most likely by all of Mycroft’s calculations.

“What will you do if I die first?”  
“Fuck your corpse while it’s still warm.”

How Sherlock had laughed at that answer. Disturbing, mocking, laughter at Mycroft’s audacity.

“And what will you do if it’s the other way round?”  
“Ride you until rigor mortis sets in.”

Mycroft had smiled at that. His demented little brother giving in, at last, to the strange and twisted affection between them.

Not that anything is certain. Mycroft is realistic when it comes down to the details, pragmatic in a way that is entirely a matter of classical economics. These are dreams and fantasies shared between brothers. There is no guarantee that anything, either hopes for, will ever come to pass.

 

Invariably, when the end comes, it is not as careful or picturesque as Mycroft would like. Sherlock struggles has he goes down, cawing at Mycroft’s face in a last, desperate, attempt to break Mycroft’s grip around his throat. Mycroft endures the pain, the shredding of skin under Sherlock’s nails, the violent crack of knees and feet as Sherlock tries to gain some purchase against him. It does Sherlock little good, pressed down beneath Mycroft’s body, the floor around him conveniently clear of anything that might be used as a weapon.

When it is over, Mycroft stares down at his brother’s pale face and wonders that he ever thought it beautiful at all. In death, what remains of Sherlock holds little interest for him. Not the tears nor the pleading nor the struggling have endeared Sherlock to Mycroft in the slightest. It has all been so commonplace, so sordid, that Mycroft can’t but help feel that he has been cheated, betrayed by Sherlock entirely. Sherlock ought not to have died like all the others. Of all men, he ought to have gone down into the darkness fearlessly, carelessly. He shouldn’t have sobbed and begged Mycroft to stop.

There is, of course, the usual, criminally incompetent, investigation into Sherlock’s death, on the very brink of his triumphant return. Nothing conclusive is found and Mycroft is careful to see to the sabotaging of all the evidence. Sally Donovan is tricked, carefully, cruelly, into testifying to Sherlock’s homosexuality and the likelihood of his having been murdered by a disgruntled lover. Brian Anderson is misled as to the correct usage of the new arrays and his staff make a surprising number of undergraduate mistakes in the entire process of a critical Southern Blot. Even the incorruptible Molly Hooper mistakes one mark for another, under the unforgiving lights of the autopsy room, beguiled and intrigued by the faintest of possibilities whispered in her ear. And of course, John Watson will go to his grave believing that Sherlock was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, the very absurdity of which will be the grounds for his, entirely unexpected, suicide in a few weeks time.

 

“You killed him when he wouldn’t have sex with you?”

Irene takes a sip of her tea, her back to him, looking out at Hyde Park through the tall windows.

“No, I don’t think I should have liked to sleep with him at all.”

Mycroft doesn’t move from the couch or even turn his head in her direction.

“He disappointed you. You expected grace and elegance, and instead-”  
“Instead there was only death. Boring and commonplace. So very dull, don’t you think? Let’s not talk about such inanities.”

She smiles.

“How terrible for him to have been loved by you at all.”

Mycroft sips his tea thoughtfully. It occurs to him that perhaps Sherlock had known that all along.


End file.
